The following Editor's response, written by Will Dendis, is reprinted from The Saugerties Times, 03-06-08  My Bad Editorial Response by Will Dendis   I'd like to use this space to apologize to the school board for allowing a now semi-infamous letter to appear in last week's paper from one "Aunt Bea." In it, the writer talks about how she visited Saugerties and was absolutely smitten -- until, on the advice of her sister, she attended a school board meeting and was so thoroughly disgusted with the manners and demeanor of some of the board members that she decided against moving here. She asked that her name be given as "Aunt Bea," lest her family be singled out for harassment by members of the school board who are police officers (three current board members are or were police officers in either the town or village). Well... that did seem a little paranoid, but then again, public relations with the police here in Saugerties are at something of a low point, so it didn't come as a complete surprise that an outsider would cast aspersions on the entire force. But still, I remember making a note to give "Aunt Bea" a call (she did furnish me with an actual name and address) to check out her story, hopefully persuade her to allow her name to be printed. But I never did. I do have an admittedly lame explanation for this lapse. Last week, I had an epic fall on a patch of ice while negotiating a friend's driveway in the dark. What surely would have been hilarious for any onlooker (there wasn't one) wasn't any fun for me. I ended up with a concussion and some sort of back injury that left me confined to a bed for four days, with lingering pain afterwards. As anyone who has a back injury can attest, there's nothing more debilitating. So, Tuesday night, the time when I gather all the last-minute submissions destined for the printer the following day, found me in traction at home typing out letters and obituaries. As I typed Aunt Bea's letter from a hard copy, I thought, "Well, this is certainly a colorful letter. I must be sure to call the number tomorrow and confirm her identity so this gets into the paper." It's not that I wanted to stick it to the Board of Education -- actually, I just really wanted to have such a boisterous letter in what was shaping up to be a wishy-washy edition of the paper (due in no small part to me being stuck staring at the ceiling instead of doing my job sussing out stories). In fact, I feel that's one advantage to not being a resident of Saugerties -- lacking a personal stake in politics and policy, my mission is simply to put out a lively paper that covers every base possible, entertaining while it informs (and vice versa). I have no time or motive for vendettas. Back to the letter: there was so much information on the inside address column, including several phone numbers, I assumed it would be no problem tracking down Aunt Bea. But when I arrived at the office the next day, I realized I'd forgotten to bring the letter. Right there and then, I should have made the decision not to print the letter that week, but instead I decided to go ahead and call Aunt Bea the next day. After all, she certainly was a real person, right? I just had to make sure. Bad idea. When I managed to dig up the letter Thursday morning, I found that that wealth of contact information did not contain Aunt Bea's phone number -- though it did, for some reason, contain several of Ulster Publishing's lines -- and the road given does not exist, according to any source I could find on the Internet. So that was it. I'd been tricked. Probably. Who knows? The criticism in that letter wasn't the first I'd heard of its kind. But that's not the issue. As trustee George Heidcamp Sr. rightly pointed out, there is no reason for the Saugerties Times to relax its letter policy. There's really no good reason to print anonymous letters. Once in awhile, we do make use of anonymous sources, but almost always for background/confirmation purposes on heady news stories where a source's career could be compromised if his or her identity were made public. This was not one of those cases. So, rather than pretend it never happened, I'd like to say I'm sorry to Mr. Heidcamp and all the board members for allowing anonymous attacks to be leveled against them. That's not the kind of paper the Saugerties Times is, and I hope anyone who was offended accepts this apology, and that anyone's opinion concerning this paper's integrity wasn't permanently compromised.